There have been various attempts over the years to create a true BIM portal, with links to all relevant documentation. Have you checked out CODEBIM? The reports page is pretty impressive list of BIM documents …
A new challenge faced by collaborative design teams – how to work concurrently, yet not do the same thing four times?
Consider these comments from Glenn Jowett: “If you look at the process of designing a steel framed building there is the potential for at least four steel frame models to exist within one design team, four models that have been built from scratch by different people within that design team. … The design team should sit down at the start of a project and map out who owns what elements at what stage of the project … The copy monitor tools within Revit are far from perfect, but this seems to be the only option for walls at the moment. … In traditional 2D, drawings would be issued and revisions clouded; in the 3D model revisions can’t be clouded and drawing issues between the design teams are becoming less and less frequent.” via http://revitst.blogspot.in/2013/08/revit-collaboration.html
Checklist: Finally, some great ideas of what to discuss at a pre-project BIM meeting from the same post: “An initial BIM or Revit meeting should take place at the start of every major project, purely from a Revit and collaboration point of view items for discussion should be: · File format for data exchange · How often are files exchanged · Clearly define what the model is to be used for at what stage in the design process · Who models what and when · Who owns what and when does element ownership go from one discipline to another · Level of development (LOD) – what level of model information should I expect to receive at what stage? And does that meet my expectations · How often should clash detection take place · Project coordinates and project north position. It is important that the above items (at least) are discussed before a project really starts to evolve, and the decisions on each item should be documented and set out in a BIM Execution Plan. Collaboration will be much easier to manage if every member of the design team has the same set of core principles to follow from start to finish.”
To the above list, I would add at least the following:
common list of Phases
common set of Worksets (or at least exchange Workset lists)
how many models will a multi-disciplinary consultant firm be providing? One combined? Or multiple?
discuss if any particular Copy/Monitor Revit Categories will be key to the project
The RIBA Plan of Work Toolbox corresponds directly with the supporting publication, Assembling a Collaborative Project Team. Contains a customisable Project Roles Table, Design Responsibility Matrix and Multidisciplinary Schedules of Services.
I can’t recall how many BIM document PDFs I have downloaded over the years. There are web indexes of the indexes of the lists of standards you can access…
Martí Broquetaslist of BIM standards has been updated: He “turned the list into a table that can be sorted clicking on the headers. THis way it is easy to sort the standards by country,or date or name, etc. “ via CAD addict: List of Existing BIM Standards
From the About page: We don’t want to re-invent the wheel. We’re fully aware that many groups / professional bodies / organisations are already out there doing their bit to assist the general direction and goals of the industry. We differ from these groups in that we wish to present an holistic and unified representation of the AEC industry without attachment to any particular discipline or professional body by using practicing industry professionals to produce meaningful, unbiased recommendations. We will provide advice to those producing documents and guidelines for BIM / IPD as well as clients that wish to know more about BIM; both what it can do for them and what they can realistically expect from the industry.
Many legal questions are getting asked in and around the BIM community. From “Who owns the model?” to “Who is responsible to track changes?”, we find ourselves in a new and somewhat scary world of legal consequences to our modelling action.
Some of these issues are captured in the following downloads and quotes, which in turn were taken from a post on Out-Law.com, a legal news site run by Pinsent Masons.
Here are a few interesting quotes: The Protocol published by the Construction Industry Council (CIC) is to be incorporated into existing construction contractual arrangements, although its terms can then be amended to set out particular rights around intellectual property ownership. It sets out the obligations that the different contracting parties would have to adhere to under the terms of individual projects…
“…it is a clear step forward and should accelerate the up-take of BIM across the UK construction industry, particularly on public sector projects.” (quoting Infrastructure law specialist Khalid Ramzan of Pinsent Masons)
As might be expected, the definition of BIM is perhaps a little naive, or maybe just utopian? A BIM system uses a computer generated model to collect and manage information about the design, construction and operation of a project centrally. It is especially useful where many parties, such as different sub-contractors, provide input on the same project. Any changes to the design of a project made during its construction are automatically applied to the model.
Free download of PAS 1192-2:2013 Specification for information management for the capital/delivery phase of construction projects using building information modelling at:
Or is it a professional, individual endeavor? Or both? Five quick quotes from different parts of the latest JBIM: When practiced correctly, BIM is meant to support collaboration across the facilities life cycle. BIM is the flow of information through a project, from inception to completion and throughout the entire life cycle of a structure.
Unfortunately, the industry is still developing separate models that are not communicating.
… as projects become bigger and more distributed, some teams struggle with the collaborative aspects inherent to BIM. The utilization of BIM technology can result in improved occupational safety by connecting the safety issues more closely to construction planning. IFC4 introduces the concept of material profiles, where axis-based components, such as beams, pipes and ducts, can be described by paths and cross-sections of materials, along with offsets relative to the axis and end points.
The journal seems to contain quite a bit of info on NBIMS, NBIMS-US and even IFC4.
The sheer volume of different BIM standards can be confusing in itself – and that is without even considering the a) usefulness, b) applicability, c) practicality or d) up-to-date-ness of these different standards